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The AIH Transcript for September 14, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I’m Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight:

CO: Hitting home. A local fire chief who spent days battling a fast-moving Oregon wildfire, only to return home to find her own house completely destroyed by the blaze.

CH: “Keep calm and carry on”... is not at all what one of Donald Trump's top communications officials advised in a late-night rant posted online. But he did warn of a left-wing insurrection and reveal his belief that government scientists are plotting against him and the president.

CO: Madame tout le monde. A former prime minister's chief of staff, remembers Aline Chretien as the woman who guarded Jean Chretien against everything from armed intruders to political flights of fancy.

CH: Grounded. Thirteen months after a cable was intentionally cut at the Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish, B.C., it's happened again. And the city's mayor says the impact is huge.

CO: Failure to act. A 24-year-old Metis man ends his weeks’-long protest against the Saskatchewan's legislature — but says the government continues to ignore calls to address a suicide crisis in the province.

CH: And... cloudy with a chance of life. New research finds an unexplained compound in the clouds of Venus. A discovery scientists say points to the presence of living organisms.

CH: “As It Happens”, the Monday edition. Radio that welcomes the change of space.

Part one: Oregon fire chief, Sea to Sky Gondola, Aline Chrétien obit

Oregon fire chief

Guest: Christiana Rainbow Plews

CH: Around the Upper McKenzie region of Oregon, Christiana Rainbow Plews is known simply as "chief Rainbow.” She's the fire chief for the rural area east of Eugene. And last week, she and her small crew headed out to battle the blaze of a lifetime — one of the many wildfires that are sweeping through the Western U.S. But when she returned home, she discovered that she had no home to return to. We reached Chief Rainbow in a motel in Vida, Oregon.

CO: Chief Rainbow, has it sunk in for you how much you lost last week?

CHRISTIANA RAINBOW PLEWS: When I'm off the fire line and not in the middle of what happened, it is very hard for me to wrap my head around it. But when I am up in the middle of it and driving by home after home after home, including my own, that is then reduced to just ashes and a foundation, I'm very aware. And I'm bearing a very heavy burden of an entire community that's lost.

CO: I'm so sorry.

CRP: Thank you.

CO: Can you just take us back to when you first headed out to fight this fire? And when you got there, what was it like, what did you see?

CRP: We were initially called for a power line down and a subsequent brush and grass fire. And when I arrived on scene, that had grown fairly significantly to about a tenth of an acre and was up in trees and the wind was blowing while I stood and did the initial assessment. The fire jumped the highway and began burning on the other side of the highway. It was very clear from the very beginning that it was going to be something much bigger and faster than our initial crews could handle.

CO: When you're in the midst of that when you're surrounded by a fire like that, what does it look like, what does it sound like to be in the midst of that fighting that fire?

CRP: Oh, there's nothing really like it. It's very loud, especially with the wind levels that we had, the wind gusts. There's a cracking and snapping. Trees were falling. It’s hot and smoky, as smoky as you can ever imagine. And hot embers in the air. So this is sort of terrifying to breathe because there's large chunks of burning stuff, you know, flying in the smoke. Everything is on fire from the ground to the tops of the trees.

CO: You're fighting these flames and battling the fires. But you know that in the midst of that, these are people's homes that you're trying to save.

CRP: Yeah. And at that point, it's people's lives trying to get them out because these homes are gonna burn. And I knew these homes were gonna burn. I didn't realize mine would. But certainly, I mean, we were watching this happen and 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock at night, these folks are home in bed. And a lot of the community level went from nothing to go now. [laughing] And no, one, two, three. There was no build-up. It was just everybody get out now.

CO: And were you able to get everybody out safely?

CRP: I wish I could say that everyone got out safely. I know that not everyone was able to get out. I know there's loss of life, and that's heavy on my heart. I can only hope that our early warning was able to give people time to get out.

CO: And I know you sent out that warning, you were telling them to evacuate in the middle of the night.

CRP: Yes.

CO: So that was a long night for you, wasn't it?

CRP: Yes, we were in that mode, just a sort of survival mode, for probably that first 12 hours. Then we were able to kind of regroup and come up with a plan and try to keep more homes from burning because the fire was so, so active for about 24 hours, even after it had kind of blown down the valley and done the initial damage, it was still just burning everywhere.

CO: When were you able to finally go home to see what had survived?

CRP: I had confirmation that my home was not standing on late Tuesday night, but I was not able to physically see it until Wednesday.

CO: And what did you see when you got there?

CRP: Um, [deep sigh] It was I pulled down my driveway. Both of the homes on my property were completely levelled. With just nothing recognizable in the ashes. It's a little cul de sac, so it's my house, and then another home we own and our neighbour's house and all three were completely levelled, just white ash. And then there was a garden shed between the houses that belongs to my neighbour and his lawnmower was in there. And the shed was untouched and lawnmower looks good. [chuckling] So it's just no rhyme or reason. I did find a couple of my chickens that had survived, that had been left on the property. Snd initially, I was able to find our pet goat. But she's since, I think, taken up refuge at a different neighbour's house that still has a porch and a green lawn. [laughing] So I did find those little bits of hope. And, yeah, there's just nothing, nothing left. Just having it be my stuff. You know, my grandfather's World War Two uniform and my grandmother's china. And it's my personal stuff. It was it was devastating.

CO: And so how are you able to continue doing what you're doing, given your own losses?

CRP: Well, I have a strong family that is dealing with a lot of the personal side of things as far as, you know, like our insurance claims and where we're going to live next? And those kinds of things, I do have a strong family unit that is really stepped up and is supporting each other and working through some of that. And I have so much other stuff I need to do that I'm then able to focus on some of that. I'm trying to take care of my volunteer firefighters that have lost everything. And make sure that they are safe and they have their needs met. And to have, you know, some spare people that can fill in for us locally well we start to build again. Just in the fire department, we've lost half of our infrastructure to this devastating fire. So I'm leaning heavily right now on the Oregon Fire Service in a big picture. I have friends who have fire experience. And trying to get through some of this initial paperwork and, you know, forms and photos and things that we need to do to start moving forward as well.

Cheif Rainbow, it sounds like you have a very strong group around you, which is really important. And with everything on your plate, I appreciate that you would find time to talk to us. Thank you.

CRP: I really appreciate you telling our story.

CO: Take care.

CRP: Thank you.

CH: We reached fire chief Christiana Rainbow Plews in Vida, Oregon.

Sea to Sky Gondola

Guest: Karen Elliott

CH: The manager of the Sea to Sky gondola is feeling some awful deja vu today. At about 4:00 in the morning, a cable at the tourist attraction in Squamish, British Columbia was intentionally cut — leaving gondola cars damaged on the mountain. As we went to air tonight, police hadn't made any arrests. And if you feel like you've heard this story before, you have. Just over a year ago, the same thing happened. Karen Elliott is the mayor of Squamish. That's where we reached her.

CO: Mayor Elliott, have you been able to process yet how something like this could have happened twice?

KAREN ELLIOTT: It was a very abrupt wakeup call this morning, Carol. And I think I still am processing it. And I was just onsite with the gondola staff, and you can see how much this impacts them. Just say, looking in their eyes and hearing in their voices. So, yeah, It’s had a huge impact on everybody.

CO: Tell us about how you learned of it early this morning?

KE: The general manager of the gondola left me a message at 6:30. I missed that call. And then our inspector in charge at the RCMP phoned me at 6:50. And I know when I see her name come up on my phone that I am not about to receive good news.

CO: And what did they tell you as far as what they knew at that point?

KE: You know, they just explained that the line had been cut again. It looked very similar to the first incident. That there was a heavy police presence in and around the gondola. And that they would have more information. My second call of the morning was to Kirby Brown at the gondola, to understand a little bit better what was going on and just to really let him know that, you know, the city was there to support them, as we did last time, in whatever way we could.

CO: And just describe, as far as you know and what you can see and what you've been told, what exactly happened?

KE: It appears that the person, again, scaled a tower and has used some sort of device to cut the cable. It was very difficult to see this morning because of the smoke. The wildfires in the U.S. have created quite smoky conditions here. So there are three gondola cars that are at the base and three at the top that are fine. The wire is down on the downhill side of the gondola, not the uphill side. So probably like last time, most of the cars in the middle have crashed to the ground. Some may be precariously sitting on the wire still. So it's still a very dangerous situation and they're using a lot of caution as they are up there investigating.

CO: How does it compare with what happened last year?

KE: I think the challenge this time around is that we were already in a very challenging tourism economy for our community this summer. And so this adds an extra complexity to have one of our main tourism attractions now offline again heading into what was already going to be a pretty challenging winter. And I think for people to remember is that the first time this happened, it was in August of twenty 2019. They managed to get open again on Valentine's Day of this year. They had a month of operation and then shut down again because of the pandemic, reopened in June, and now they're closed again. So it has not been a great year for them, and they're determined to reopen. But it's something that, you know, we'll have to sit down as a community with our community partners, like the chamber and Tourism Squamish and the gondola and see what needs to happen over the winter months to not only support them but any of the knock-on effects that this would have because of reduced visitation to the gondola on some of our other tourism operators.

CO: I understand from people who know Squamish that this is a big deal. The Sea to Sky Gondola is so popular. It's just so big in people's lives. There are all kinds of bookings for people to have their pictures taken. The weddings that were going to go up there. All of that was part of it, wasn't it?

KE: Absolutely. It's so well-loved by our community locally, but Squamish has always had a name for its more extreme sports, like mountain biking and kiteboarding and mountain climbing. And what the Sea to Sky Gondola did when it opened is it provided just an easy and safe way for just thousands more people to come up and experience the views and understand this beautiful place, Howe Sound, that we call home and learn more about the Squamish Nation, and their traditional territory. So it just it provided sort of high alpine experience to people that wouldn't necessarily have the skills to get up there on their own. So it opened the door to people really appreciating what we have here.

CO: But just to go back to what happened, and when comparing it to last year, we know that there was enhanced security on the Sea to Sky Gondola installed. They installed cameras and motion detectors. And so why do you think that wasn't enough to stop this from happening?

KE: It's difficult for me to say. I don't know the details of how this person has done at this time, or people. But I think, you know, this is a beautiful outdoor setting. And I think the gondola, you know, putting in the alarm system and putting in the cameras felt like they had struck the right balance to not look like they were sort of militarizing the backcountry. And, you know, part of the gondala goes through a BC park. But as Kirby said this morning, they'll be looking at making sure that physical access to the towers, they've got to fix that as an issue. And they'll have to rethink their security measures again. Clearly, all of us want this person or people caught. It's, you know, this has an impact. You know, people are out of jobs. This impacted the community. And we want the perpetrator, or perpetrators, brought to justice, clearly.

CO: I mean, you must speculate, must try to figure out what could be the possible motive of if it is the same party, parties, that have done both, why would anyone do this?

KE: I think that's the hardest part for not only me and the leadership team at the gondola, but for our community. And there's been lots of speculation about that why. And until we catch the person, or people, responsible, we don't know. And as I said, this is a tourism asset in our community that is well-loved. It's used by locals. It brings in visitors that help stimulate our local economy. And so it's just hard to understand why anyone would do this. And it's personal. It's the second attack. It's been done in a very similar way. It's, yeah, it's hard to take in.

CO: Mayor Elliott, I appreciate you’d speak with us. Thank you.

KE: Thanks for checking in with us, Carol.

CO: Bye.

KE: Bye.

CH: Karen Elliott is the mayor of Squamish, B.C. That's where we reached her.

Aline Chrétien obit

Guest: Eddie Goldenberg

CH: If it weren't for Aline Chaîné, it's possible that the little guy from Shawinigan would have stayed in Shawinigan. Chaîné was the birth name of Aline Chrétien — the wife, essential adviser and sometime bodyguard to former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Aline Chrétien died on Saturday at the age of 84. In 2018, during an interview with Carol, Jean Chretien described their relationship.

JEAN CHRETIEN: We've been married now for 61 years. And I met her, she was 16 and I was 18. She was the next door girl. And we know we felt in love very young. And we married, I was student at university. She was a student at secondary. You know, we were from a poor part of Shawinigan. And then we said to each other we'd get out of here. And we managed to get out of there.

CO: [chuckling] Pretty thoroughly.

JC: Pretty. And we did all these long ventures together. And she's a quiet lady and an intelegent lady, obviously. And she was very good to me to encourage me and tell me when I was making mistake. And I remember one day, you know, I wanted to quit. And she said no. She came, and for the first time, and last time on my life, she served me a breakfast in the bed. [CO laughs] And she says, you're going back to work. You're not quitting. And things turn around very quickly. And sometimes, people will call her to put pressure on me. And, you know, I remember one very important business person called her and she said, if you want to put pressure on Jean, I’m not giving you the telephone and the type of thing. So, you know, it's why I called her my “Rock of Gibraltar”.

CH: That was Jean Chrétien speaking to Carol about his wife, Aline Chretien, in 2018. Ms. Chrétien died on Saturday.Eddie Goldenberg was the Chief of Staff in Jean Chrétien's Prime Minister's Office. We reached Mr. Goldenberg in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Goldenberg, first of all, our condolences to you, and to your friend, Jean Chretien.

EDDIE GOLDENBERG: Thank you, Carol.

CO: And she was all the things that Mr. Cretien was describing in that clip. Does that ring true for you?

EG: Oh, very much so. Look, she was probably his closest adviser and confidant. She was a wonderful lady. She was a classy lady. She was generous. She was kind. She was very elegant. But she was also very grounded in where she came from. She never forgot her roots. And she kept him grounded, too.

CO: You were at his side for so much of his career, so you could see the ups and downs in those moments, where he kind of jokes about moments of wanting to quit, and she persuades him not to. But how important was she? Because he says he perhaps never have become prime minister without her.

EG: I think that's true. I don't think anybody could overestimate how important she was to him. It was very much of a partnership. And, I mean, he told me one time it went way back. That he didn't have a lot of discipline when he was at school. And it was until after he met her, she was the one who told him that he better buckle down and get and do well in school. So it goes back a long time.

CO: She was more than just a nice person, wasn't she? I mean --

EG: Oh, she was a very strong person.

CO: Yes.

EG: She was a very intelligent person. This is a woman who left school at 16 because the family had no money. And she became a very cultured person. She learned languages. She was very interested in the arts. She was very interested in music. She was somebody who was a very, very substantial person.

CO: What were the moments when she persuaded him to make decisions, to change course or to keep the course?

EG: Well, she always was of the view that she was not the one who was elected. So that the thing to do is that she could have her influence by giving him advice, candid advice, in private. And she didn't usually share that advice with anybody else. But he would say sometimes, you know, I made a speech last night, and Aline was in the front. And it was pretty clear that she wasn't happy with the way with what I was saying. And afterwards, she told me why I was wrong and why I better I better shape up next time. You know, he would come home sometimes. He said, there's a program that's being suggested. And it sounds, Aline, like it works in theory. And she said, well, it may work in theory, but it sure wouldn't go over in practice in Shawinigan or anywhere else in Canada. So don't do it. And he’d say, OK. And he’d go back to the office the next day and say we're not going ahead with that.

CO: And she gave very few interviews. I think maybe only one, which was to Macleans magazine back in the 1990s, where she described herself as Madame tout le Monde, Mrs. Everybody. And she recalls a story, a time when she warned Jean Chretien not to touch the family allowance checks that they were considering at that point, and that she said this is the only money that some women have in Shawinigan for themselves. So just don't go near it.

EG: That's right. And that was probably a very, very good piece of advice at the time.

CO: There's one story, of course, people will want me to ask you about, and what you can recall. Which is back in 1990s, when in the prime minister's official residence in the middle of the night, there was an intruder, jackknife-wielding man broke in. And because she is a light sleeper, she said, she encountered him in the hall outside and was able to alert everyone. What do you remember about that story?

EG: Well, what I remember about it, this was about a week or so, 10 days after the Quebec referendum, things are pretty tense at the time. And it was the same day that Prime Minister Rabin had been assassinated in Israel. So the Chretiens were leaving the next morning to go to the Rabin funeral. And, you know, during the middle of the night, at 3:00 in the morning, she heard some noise in the house. And I don't think they didn't have any staff in the house. And she was a little concerned. So she got up and opened open the bedroom door to see what was going on, and found somebody in the coridor with a knife. So she ran back into the bedroom. They had a lock on the door, locked the door, woke her husband up and called the police. And what I recall very well is that the police were outside and did not do a great job of coming in. [chuckling] They decided they had to secure the perimeter of the house before coming to see somebody who was carrying a knife. But at any rate, I think she saved her life and his life by being a light sleeper that night.

CO: After she woke up Jean Chretien, he armed himself, I think, with a carving or something.

EG: It was an innuit carving. But in case the intruder broke into the bedroom.

CO: OK, so that scrappiness [chuckling], Aline didn't back away from a fight, did she? And she did so --

EG: No. But, you know, it's a great story. [laughing] I mean, I don't think, you know, she didn't have much choice. What would you do if you open the door and you saw somebody with a knife who wants to kill your husband? You slam the door and you call the police.

CO: [chuckling] But she also, I mean, in politics, she talked about her appetite for the fight.

EG: Well, I go beyond that, because what was interesting about that is that a few months later, there was a famous incident where he grabbed a protester by the throat, and we call it “The Shawinigan Handshake”. But that night, he was very concerned about that. That night, I was over doing some work towards the end of the day. And he said to me, he said, why don't you stay for dinner? It didn't happen very often, so I stayed. And during dinner, at one point, the prime minister got up. I think probably to go to the washroom. And Madame Chretien said to me, Eddie, do you think somebody is going to kill Jean one day? So, you know, protection of a prime minister in public life is very, very important. And threats are very tough on families.

CO: Did she not also, though, tell him that she didn't think “The Shawinigan Handshake”, that incident was something that he shouldn't be proud of?

EG: Well, she may have said it at the time, but became almost folklore in Canada.

CO: What will you remember about Aline Chretien?

EG: You know, I've been thinking about that in the last couple of days. And I'm not sure. I mean, there are many, many memories. I started to work for him, for Mr. Chretien, after my first year in law school as a summer student. And he was very kind. And I got to know the family. And I've known the family for, you know, almost 50 years. So, I mean, I remember, as I said, I remember as very supportive of him, very supportive staff, very, very strong on the importance of family. And she was a mother and grandmother and a great grandmother. I think they have six or seven great-grandchildren. And in the last few years, they were really the joy of her life and his life.

CO: We will leave it there. Mr. Goldenberg, thank you.

EG: Thank you very much.

CO: Bye.

EG: Bye-bye.

CH: Eddie Goldenberg was the Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Mr. Chretien's wife, Aline, has died. She was 84.

Part two: Caputo rant video, Venus life chemical

Caputo rant video

Guest: Dan Diamond

CH: Any top government communications official should know: posting on your "private" Facebook page is not private. Yesterday, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States, Michael Caputo, hosted a Facebook live video which beamed out to his thousands of friends. And then, promptly, to the media. In it, the Trump loyalist claimed that U.S. government scientists were actively trying to undermine President Trump, warned of an armed insurrection after the election, and said he was personally under threat. Dan Diamond is Politico's health and politics reporter. We reached him in Kiawah, South Carolina.

[Music: Indie rock]

CO: And so this is not like the fluffy white that [laughing] are skirting across--

SS: No, not at all.

CO: That we find so pretty. This is not pretty, I guess, from our point of view.

SS: Not at all. But, you know, the funny thing is people have speculated about life in the Venus atmosphere for over 50 years, starting with Carl Sagan.

CO: And so what new information then is possible with this phosphenes discovery?

SS: It's going to be a catalyst for more research on Venus. Hopefully, it'll push space agencies who are thinking of sending a mission to Venus to actually go ahead and do it.

CO: Is that the only way you could actually find out if there's life on Venus?

SS: In my opinion, yes.

CO: And what's the likelihood of that?

SS: We really don't know right now. I mean, Venus is so different from Earth. We can say that all the ingredients for life are there. If you ask anyone, any scientist, you know, what does life need? It needs the right temperature for life. Not so hot that complex molecules will be broken apart. It needs a liquid. And there is liquid, although it's a very nasty liquid, sulfuric acid. Life needs an energy source. Venus has the sun. And it needs changing conditions so life can evolve. So, scientifically, all the things life needs are there. But whether or not life is there, we can't answer that scientifically right now.

CO: Was there a time when it's possible that Venus did have life like Earth has life?

SS: Possibly. Scientists are pretty confident that Venus used to have liquid water oceans, just like Earth does today. But this was a long time ago — hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. But Venus heated up. And water vapour, lots and lots of water vapour evaporated and filled the Venus atmosphere. And, you know, water vapour is our most potent greenhouse gas. So as more water vapour went in the atmosphere, Venus absorbed more sunlight, and it triggered a runaway process where Venus got hotter and hotter until the oceans evaporated, and the water molecules got split up by sunlight, and all the hydrogen escaped to space. And eventually, Venus became too hot and dry for water oceans.

CO: Yikes! [chuckling] That greenhouse effect can be pretty powerful, eh? So now, I guess when people are asking or thinking about life on Venus, we're thinking of intelligent life. We're thinking, are we alone? Is there another life form out there that we can communicate with? But we’re far from that, aren’t we.

SS: We are. It is true, though, it's something we see depicted in movies and TV shows and science fiction novels. We all somehow harbour that hope that we will meet another intelligent species someday.

CO: Do you think there is? I mean, you study this, you think about it. Did you imagine that's possible that out there, there is some other intelligent life that we might one day connect with?

SS: You know, there is science, and then there is speculation? So, scientifically, I would say we don't have any evidence one way or the other. But if you want me to speculate, well, there are just so many stars out there, you know, in our own night sky, and in a truly dark environment, we could see many hundreds or even thousands of stars. But our own Milky Way galaxy, we have billions, hundreds of billions of stars. And we think there's hundreds of billions of galaxies. So I do think there is some kind of intelligent life out there somewhere. But I'm not convinced that we'll have a chance to contact or even remotely interact with that intelligent life.

CO: I guess it's harder to imagine that there wouldn't be life out there someplace given the scope of it,eh?

SS: Right. Right.

CO: Professor Seager, I really appreciate you telling us about this. Thank you.

SS: Thank you so much for having me.

CH: Sara Seager co-authored a new study about phosphine in the clouds of Venus, a chemical compound that may be associated with life. We reached her in Boston.

Toots Hibbert obit

CH: In an interview with Rolling Stone, Toots Hibbert said, "When people say I'm great, I say I'm not great but I will try to be great one day." He didn't give that interview in the 1960s. He gave it a few months ago. And while he was known for his honesty and humility, Mr. Hibbert was incorrect. He was indisputably great — and he had been great for about 60 years. Toots Hibbert — singer, songwriter, and leader of the legendary Toots and the Maytals — died on Saturday, in Kingston, Jamaica. He was 77. When the vocal group formed in the early '60s, they were at the forefront of the rocksteady sound. Then they helped push tempos up as rocksteady evolved into ska. And they were among the pioneers as ska slowed down and evolved into reggae. And more than any other big Jamaican act, Toots and the Maytals showed the influence of American R & B and soul music. Especially Toots Hibbert himself. Listen to how he brings out the soul in this cover of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads".

CH: Toots and the Maytals were successful abroad, but it's a mystery why he never became the international superstar Bob Marley was. He did have setbacks — an arrest for marijuana possession in 1966, and a head injury from a vodka bottle thrown by a fan in 2013. But he overcame them. And he did that by following a simple philosophy, which he shared with the Guardian this year: "It's not complicated. Don't take life for granted, be careful, be strong." The great Toots Hibbert died on Saturday. He was 77 years old.

[Music: Bluegrass]

Part three: Belarus protester, Mosul strike compensation

India Carleton student

CH: Nehaa Bimal always wanted to study in Canada. But when she got accepted at Carleton University, she decided not to risk moving halfway around the world, in the middle of a pandemic. Instead, she is navigating first year in Carleton's journalism school from her home in India. That means living on Ottawa time while being in Bangalore. She shared her story today on CBC's "Ottawa Morning".

NEHAA BIMAL: Obviously, I would love to be on campus, but we have international travel restrictions. And, of course, a visa which is currently on hold right now. So, yeah, I'd switched all my clocks on my laptop, my phone to Canada Time, EST. I think my latest class is about from 12:00 a.m. in the morning and to 2:55 a.m. But overall, my classes are in the evening, while everyone else has it in the morning in Canada. It is manageable. I'm switching my schedule around a bit. But so far, so good. It's only week two.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Did you at any point think, you know what? Not this year. I think it's just gonna be too difficult taking these classes late into the night. Not being able to be there, yet, still paying your tuition fees, which for international students, I mean, that ranges between 28,000 and 40,000 dollars a year.

NB: So I didn't have the option to opt-out of university, but there were a couple of concessions made, like we could opt-out if UHIP and UPASS, which was health insurance and the transit cost. And, obviously, I did have a couple of scholarships as well that helped facilitate the fees. And my fee as a journalism student wasn't too high compared to some of the STEM programs. So it still was worth it for me.

RB: Um-hm. I mean, presumably, there are some good journalism programs in India as well. Did you think about switching and doing it from one of your home universities?

NB: So we do have a couple of journalism schools here and universities, but they're all relatively new. They really started out in the past couple of years. So I wanted a program that was, you know, had the experience, has been going on for the long run. And Carleton University, like, their journalism program is exceptional. So it was sort of a clincher for me.

RB: What are you missing most about not actually physically being here?

NB: Definitely the social interaction, and that cultural immersion that I wanted to experience my first year in Canada. I've never been there before. So everything's online right now. The way I'm communicating with people in my program is through Zoom, through Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord. There's so many different online platforms, but it's not the same as being with or meeting people for the first time in-person. And even the classroom environment is so different. You know, my humanities courses are supposed to be this intimate environment where we discuss and talk about books and different ideas that now it's sort of impersonal being online. It lacks that intimacy that classes should have.

CH: That was Nehaa Bimal speaking with Robyn Bresnahan on CBC's "Ottawa Morning" today.

[Music: Galactic guitar]

Belarus protester

Guest: Ludmila

CH: Belarus's strongman got a little ouside help today. Alexander Lukashenko went to visit Vladmir Putin in Sochi. He came away with a billion-anda-half dollars worth of loans, and some words of support. But back in Belarus, the protests continue. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Minsk yesterday. That is despite despite brutal arrests and the expulsion or detention of top opposition politicians. Ludmila was among the protesters yesterday. We've agreed not to use her full name for her safety. We reached Ludmila in Minsk.

CO: Ludmila, how important was it, do you think, for Mr. Lukashenko to get support from Vladimir Putin today?

LUDMILA: I think it is important. Well, I can guess only because there is not much support in his home country.

CO: We saw in recent weeks and saw last week that just the hundreds of people who have been rounded up and arrested in Belarus. And seen the evidence of how they have been beaten and tortured and how it's become so difficult, and yet, people turned out by the tens of thousands, one hundred thousand at least turned out, to protest yesterday. What is giving them the strength to do that, given how much resistance they're meeting?

L: Well, I think the courage that people have is because we do believe and we do know that right now we have more chances to win that we ever had. Also, that this is our job to protect ourselves.

CO: You have seen what we have seen, which is that the people who have been arrested, it's extraordinary, the marks on their bodies and the stories that they have told about what happened to them once they were picked up. Are you afraid?

L: Yes, well, it depends. Day-by-day, the feeling might change. Sometimes it's a fear, which is normal in a situation where the laws don't work. But at the same time, it switches to being annoyed, to be annoyed by the fact that some guy didn't learn a decent way how to quit his job. So now the whole country, every one of us, have to suffer from it. So this annoyance, this anger helps fighting the fear. Because, I mean, it's very hard to be in the constant fear all the time, especially when you feel like so many people are behind you. So many people think the same way. Now we know, now we are not separated. Now we are united. And it doesn't matter like religious confessions or even ideology or even different social status. We're all there, we all see each other, and we can talk, and we talk a lot, and we share the same aim, which is very simple. Well, three of them, so the power was concentrated, thanks to separation. And now, we all have something in common. And now it feels completely different.

CO: What are those three things that will be victory for you if you accomplish?

L: New elections, a trial for all involved in torturing and killing people and freeing political prisoners.

CO: What hope, what possibility is it that you will see those things accomplished?

L: Ninety-seven per cent.

CO: Wow! You think optimistically! Have you seen anything? Are you seeing cracks? Because it doesn't seem from the outside that Mr. Lukashenko is about to give up.

L: Yeah, probably it's not that obvious from the outside. If you if you only look for like big marks of this. But kids, for example, protest at schools, students protests at universities, people protest at factories, like mine workers. There was a guy, the miner, who actually chained himself down there in the mine. And that never happened before. And he would have to leave sooner than later. There is no chance for him to stay here for a long time.

CO: We interviewed a man last week. He and his wife had been arrested at a protest. They were brutally treated. It was quite startling, the description of what happened to them in custody. I wonder... and they've left the country. They're living in exile. Do you think that that's something that more people will consider? What are people telling you about the ones who have been arrested? Do you hear people think that they should leave?

L: Many people do that. Many people consider that. All of us, I think, morally are ready to leave for some time if it's needed. I think some people also have a suitcase that they're ready to take. My friends were detained. One of my friends are still in custody. And she's an artist. She's there because of the performance. The thing is that, right now, there is no safe space. So if you're an activist, if you're an artist, if you're a journalist, or just a citizen, you are at risk. You don't even have to do anything to be detained. So at this point, you have one choice. You do nothing and you still are at risk, or you do something and you are at risk and you take the responsibility for what you do. But all the people that I've been talking to, for example, last girl, I've been talking to and she's been detained, right now, she is about to leave the country. But she stayed here after she was arrested. And after that, she was still going out in her own district to protect the flag that we are trying to put on the building. And when she was on the street, she actually saw the policemen who were beating people up while she was detained. And she told him that, she told him that despite the mask, she recognized him. And that he will be punished for what he has done. And I found this story so impressive.

CO: Wow! That is one brave young woman!

L: Exactly. But she's not the only one like that. And, for her, it was important. Then, the following days, she went also to the protest. And she went towards the chain of policemen to look them in the eyes and to find somebody else she can recognize after that. And she found another guy, and she told another guy that she recognized him. And he couldn't look at her. And the next guy to him was, like, making jokes. But then he also realized what's going on. So I think this is the power that people still have. They won't forget the brutality that's been going on. Too many people are angry. Too many people are annoyed. Most of the people already know their relatives or friends who've been beaten up or tortured. And we are not going to let it go.

CO: Do you have a suitcase packed and ready to go?

L: Not yet, [slight chuckle] but I'm still thinking that maybe I should do one, or at least to make myself a package that people can bring me to the custody if I'm there.

CO: Ludmila, I hope that you're not one of those people. And I do appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

L: Thank you.

CH: Ludmila is a Belarusian opposition protester. For her safety, we agreed not to use her full name. We reached her in Minsk.

Shere Hite obit

CH: Shere Hite was not your typical second-wave feminist. She worked as a model in graduate school. She posed topless for Playboy. And as the New York times reported today, she once appeared in an ad for a typewriter, alongside the caption, quote, "The typewriter so smart, she doesn't have to be". But she was smart. Not to mention pretty angry about that ad. And she was angry about something else too: the many ways in which female sexual pleasure was misunderstood. So she sought to understand it. Throughout the '70s, she surveyed women, anonymously, about their sexual satisfaction — or lack thereof. And although her methods were scrutinized, the conversations they generated were groundbreaking. Shere Hite died last week. She was 77. In 1976, she spoke with our former host, Mary Lou Finlay, on CBC Radio about her book, "The Hite Report on Female Sexuality". Here's part of that conversation, from our archives.

SHERE HITE: People have tried to say, well, women like sex or they don't. That's not the question whether we like it or we don't. The question is what we might have to contribute that would be new. How we might want to change sex. How we might undefine the way we see it now. How we might make it over in terms of acting on our feelings more often.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Do you think we're getting overly concerned about the subject and that maybe this is going to have a backfiring effect eventually?

SH: I think that until we straighten out exactly what's happening in sex, that it's going to keep coming up. But I think once we look at it clearly and we analyze it clearly and we all talk about it and get it out in the air and define it between women, then it's going to keep coming up as a problem.

MLF: How do men come out in your book? Are they the villains in the piece? Insensitive, clumsy, uneducated?

SH: Some are, some aren't. You got some women, you know, describing men who really sound like they were very insensitive. And some women describing men who really sound like gems. I don't think that the book as a whole is not trying to say that men individually are the villains. In other words, we have a definition of sex in our society which has come down through several centuries and had historical reason for beginning, which is no longer mainly reproductive activity, to put it oversimplified. And there is no reason why we should continue with this, I feel that men too are very oppressed sexually.

MLF: In what way?

SH: Well, the performance model, because they are supposed to have erections 24 hours a day, they're supposed to always want to have sex, all these kinds of ideas. And I've been doing a questionnaire for men for two years and in a couple more years, I'll be done with it.

MLF: TIME magazine suggest your next book will be called, “Do Men Need Intercourse?”

SH: Well, TIME magazine is silly. [bright laugh]

MLF: It's not going to be called that?

SH: No, but it's going to be about how men feel about sex.

CH: Sex educator and feminist writer Shere Hite, speaking with Mary Lou Finlay in 1976. "The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality" would come out not long after — in 1981. Ms. Hite died last week. She was 77 years old.

[Music: Clasic rock]

Mosul strike compensation

Guest: Liesbeth Zegveld

CH: Five years ago, Basim Razzo lost four of his family members in an airstrike in Iraq. His wife, his daughter, his brother, and his nephew were all killed. They were living in Mosul at the time. Coalition forces hit Mr. Razzo's place, and his brother's house, next door, based on intelligence that the site was an Islamic State bomb-making factory. It was not. Now, the Dutch government has offered first-of-its-kind compensation to Mr. Razzo. The figure has not been officially released, but media reports put it at around one-million Euro. Liesbeth Zegveld is Basim Razzo's lawyer. We reached her in Amsterdam.

CO: Ms. Zegveld. How did your client, Basim Razzo, how did he react when he learned that the Dutch government was offering this compensation?

LIESBETH ZEGVELD He was very surprised. I called him last Monday, a week ago, Monday night. I was at home. I opened the letter from the Ministery of Defence and I saw the ammount. And I immediately called him. He was driving, and he had to stop his car. And I could hear he had tears in his eyes.

CO: And were you surprised?

LZ: Yeah, I was very much. I've been in this job asisting war victims as a lawyer for two decades now, and we just never achieved this before. It sounds a bit weird, achieved, but it is, of course, I mean, it's not full compensation, but it approaches it.

CO: This goes back to a case. This is September 2015 when this happened. And he and his family had gone to sleep for the night, not knowing that they were on the radar of the coalition forces fighting ISIS in Iraq, and had decided that his house and his brother's house were legitimate targets. Does this indicate that the Dutch government, which was the coalition force that struck the house, houses, is the Dutch government admitting guilt here?

LZ: Formally, they’re not. As lawyer, informally, I would say, of course, they’re doing it. They would never come to this agreement if they wouldn't know off the record or informally that they they do bear responsibility. But, for the record, they say they do this from a humanitarian point of view, kind of a condolence payment because of the great losses. But they have admitted factual responsibility. So they have admitted that it were Dutch fliers, F-16 fliers, that struck the home based on U.S. intelligence. So their factual role is clear and not disputed. But then they say because it was not our intelligence, we're not liable for the damages. But nevertheless, we pay. Well, that can be a long story and play with words. I think we all know that if this case would have gone to court, which fortunately wasn't necessary, but it had to, the judge would definitely have awarded him the damages that have currently been awarded.

CO: The strike was based on intelligence provided by the United States, the leading force in this coalition. The United States rarely, if ever, admits that it hit the wrong place and killed innocent civilians. A New York Times, a very thorough investigation, a couple of years ago, indicated that there were maybe one in five coalition strikes that actually hit civilians that were not responsible for anything. Has the Dutch government ever admitted guilt in these instances?

LZ: Well, no. I think this is the first case that at least they admitted their role. If not guilt, they have admitted their role. Of course, the problem with the coalition is that so many countries are involved. They are not transparent about which country is doing what. So it's kind of a big blur for victims left in this lack of transparency, not knowing where to go. And my client first went to the United States, as he has a background in the United States. And he was able to to obtain access to a newspaper and journalist. And that revealed his story. And then the follow up was that better research was done into his story. And that then created the very, very exceptional case that we, and he, got to know what truly happened. But he is a great exception to all our regrets, of course. I mean, of course, he's been fortunate, you could say in a way. He's been extremely fortunate to receive something while so many victims are left with empty hands. But also, in his case, we should not forget that it's now 2020, and all those years since 2015, he has been kind of left in the dark about what exactly what happened, who threw this bomb? And no country, yes, the United States admitted this was wrong intelligence. But the Netherlands never said, you know, this was our role as well. And since the United States awards this very low amount of damages that he rejected, he was still left with empty hands. And now, by coincidence, as he found out that these were Dutch airplanes, he's now compensated. But it's it's a sequence of of luck, you could say, coincidences that the country admits to its role.

CO: And, I think, perseverance on the part of Mr. Razzo and yourself. How is he doing? I mean, he's had a number of operations to try and help the injuries he had. What can you tell us about how he's coping?

LZ: Well, yeah, he suffered great injuries. So he has a handicap himself now. He needs each new operations in order to to get full recovery. He needs to rebuild houses that he has lost. He's living in a rental apartment, nothing close to his life that he he was used to. So, yeah, it's a sad story, but as he explained to me, in a way, this money, it creates kind of an opening to to rebuild in memory of those who lost and to rebuild his own life. So it does it's it's always weird, but money does help. And the magnitude of the amount is only reflects the magnitude of his losses.

CO: We will leave it there. Ms. Zegveld, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

LZ: You're welcome. CO: Goodnight.

LZ: Goodnight.

CH: That was lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld speaking about her client Basim Razzo. We reached her in Amsterdam. And you can find more on this story to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

Joni Mitchell

CH: Every so often, I'll go through my old boxes to see if there's anything of value in there. And unless you count a Rubik's cube, some nightmarish poetry, and a dusty, half-drunk bottle of Fireball, there really isn't. But Barry Bowman isn't me. He's a former radio personality. And he's a friend of Joni Mitchell from way back. So he had something much more interesting in an old box. Here he is telling the story to CBC Vancouver.

BARRY BOWMAN: My eldest daughter came around to the house one time and she brought this box of tapes and cassettes and things that I had in my career as a broadcaster. And lo and behold, there was a couple of tapes in there that I had never thought I'd ever see again. And these were the tapes that one time back back at CFQC Radio in Saskatoon. We just spent an evening one time up at the radio station in Saskatoon. And she was an aspiring folk singer, friend of ours. We used to hang around together with a bunch of kids about our age, about 18, 19 years old. And just on my invitation one time, I just just suggested that she come on up and record an audition tape. So did an audition tape. I never realized that there she was, this young lady, 19 years old, would be, one day, Joni Mitchell [chuckle]. So there were the tapes, but it’s funny I had them over almost 50-plus years. And there they were. All of a sudden, we got them on reel-to-reel tape machine, which is very difficult to find, by the way.

STEPHEN QUINN: Oh, yeah. I can't imagine, I mean, so you think they’re lost to time. Your daughter shows up, you find the tapes, you put them on, what do you hear?

BB: I heard the first chords of this ukulele, this baritone ukulele, that we are so familiar with. And so many times they told this story, thinking that I'd never see these tapes again, and I was you know, I was some of ambivalent about it. I said, well, if that's the case, it's, you know, it was a memory and it's gone, and never will be back again. But it was a pleasant memory. And then when I heard those chords again from this experience, the memory just came, always came back to me again. And there it was. So then the question was, what do we do with them? I hadn't spoken to Joni until the last time I saw her in back in probably 1963.

SQ: Wow! And you were able to personally reunite these tapes with Joni. What was her reaction when that happened?

BB: Her reaction was just exactly like this, about as surprised as I was. But she had that stroke in that time period, and her memory was very, very poor at that time. She admitted that she had no idea, she couldn't recall anything about that experience. So with that in mind, I suggested that at least we could listen to the tape and maybe that would bring back some memories. So with her personal assistant and Joni's permission, we were invited down. We had a chance to have dinner with Joni. We spent the weekend, had a visit with her, and we handed the tapes to her personally. And I think that was a wonderful way for the story to end, I guess.

CH: Retired radio personality Barry Bowman speaking earlier today with Stephen Quinn, the host of CBC Vancouver's "Early Edition". Mr. Bowman's tapes will be included in a series of archival albums Joni Mitchell is releasing starting this fall.

September 14, 2020 Episode Transcript

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